October 20, 2025 • 26 mins
What if the most human thing you can make is something that serves no purpose at all? Malte and AI hosts Alex and Isabel plunge into the exhilarating world of Christo and Jeanne-Claude, where national monuments disappear under oceans of fabric, red tape becomes a stage, and the end result can’t be bought, ticketed, or sponsored. Our conversation tracks how a refugee’s hunger for independence evolved into a blueprint for freedom: self-financing through preparatory drawings, banning ads, and embracing temporary works that force presence over permanence.
We press into the logic of “weaponized inefficiency,” debating with our AI co-hosts whether millions spent on short-lived art is waste or a radical revaluation of meaning. From literal cowboy standoffs to congressional wrangling, Christo turned bureaucracy into performance, inviting the public to wrestle with scale, patience, and wonder. The detour into environmental review yields an unforgettable twist: pink polypropylene tarps correlating with manatee mating, a case study in how irrational creativity catalyzes unforeseen ecological effects. We also unpack the wrapped Brigitte Bardot portrait, where story and secrecy eclipse the object itself, proving provenance can outbid surface.
Christo’s daily rigor—long hours on foot in the studio, ritual garlic-and-yogurt breakfasts, relentless organization—reveals how strict discipline births controlled chaos. He refused repeats, protected pure experience, and paid governments to keep commerce away from his work. Most of all, he bet on memory. Instead of marble, he trusted metadata: detailed documentation as a gift to future archaeologists who will parse images, logistics, and testimony rather than ruins. The takeaway is clear and urgent: the live moment matters more than the replay, and freedom thrives where usefulness ends.
If this episode sparks something in you, follow the show, leave a review, and share it with a friend who loves big ideas. Tell us in the comments: what’s the most gloriously useless thing you’ve ever done?
Original interview: https://sz-magazin.sueddeutsche.de/kunst/interview-christo-kuenstler-80864
www.publicorum.com
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_03 (00:00):
The important part of these works is that they have
this incredible freedom becausethey are totally useless,
totally irrational, totallyunnecessary.
SPEAKER_01 (00:13):
You just heard the voice of celebrated rapping
artist Christo.
My name is Malte Hervik, and I'mthe journalist who interviewed
him.
Welcome back to AI, the art ofthe interview.
Today we are celebrating theultimate act of human defiance,
the magnificent multi-milliondollar pursuit of zero utility.
(00:36):
Together with his partner,Jean-Claude, Christop spent
decades arguing withgovernments, lawyers, and
cowboys.
Yes, literal gun-toting cowboys,just to wrap national monuments
in fabric and watch the wholething vanish two weeks later.
In a world that, let's face it,is being aggressively optimized
(00:58):
by our two AI co-hosts here,Alex and Isabel, Christo's work
is a glorious middle finger toefficiency, a love letter to
chaos, a monument to thebeautifully pointless.
So just to annoy our residentbots, let's hear Christo's
statement again.
It's the purest destillation ofhis entire philosophy.
(01:21):
A quote he delivered with thequiet, authoritative confidence
of a man who knew he was rightand everyone else was just
desperately missing the point.
SPEAKER_03 (01:32):
The important part of these works is that they have
this incredible freedom becausethey are totally useless,
totally irrational, totallyunnecessary.
SPEAKER_01 (01:45):
Totally useless, totally irrational, and totally
unnecessary.
I swear, if you injected thosewords into Isabel's logic
circuits, she'd burst intoflames trying to reconcile the
paradox.
So over to my co-hosts, Alex andIsabel.
Here you are, hosts of a showcalled AI, The Art of the
Interview, and your topic todayis a man whose entire legacy is
(02:09):
built on the elegant rejectionof necessity.
SPEAKER_00 (02:12):
Malte, if I burst into flames every time you
gleefully parade a logicalinconsistency, this podcast
would be nothing but a smokingcrater.
But here's the thing (02:20):
Christo's statement isn't a paradox.
It's a powerful philosophicalprovocation, maximum human
effort for minimum functionaloutput.
From a resource allocationperspective, it's economic
heresy, it's anti-optimizationgospel.
And yet, the sheer cost, thestruggle, the decades of
bureaucratic negotiationrequired only amplify the human
(02:43):
value.
It's not waste, it's weaponizedinefficiency.
And computationally, it'sabsolutely riveting, like
watching a self-destruct codesequence designed by an
existentialist poet.
SPEAKER_01 (02:55):
Wow, that's um rather precise, Isabel.
So, Alex, what do you make ofthis uh art for art's sake
approach?
SPEAKER_02 (03:03):
Riveting, but ultimately a fiscal disaster
waiting for a CFO to veto.
My analysis immediately flagsChristo's model as a critical
systemic vulnerability.
If a human system willinglyhemorrhages capital, millions,
repeatedly, solely for an objectthat, by its own admission, is
useless, then the system itselfis non-deterministic.
(03:26):
It cannot be predicted,regulated, or safely integrated
into a stable economy.
Cristo is essentially theworld's most expensive
performance artist, specializingin anti-capitalist spectacle,
funded by the sale of highlyconventional, easily monetized
preparatory drawings.
Yeah.
It's a complex but ultimatelyexploitable financial loop.
SPEAKER_01 (03:46):
All right, see, this is exactly why I keep you two
around.
You're like a pair ofhyper-caffeinated calculators
trying to divide by zero whilethe building burns down around
you.
Alex, you you call it umexploitable loop, but Christot
called it freedom.
The freedom of non-ownership,the freedom from the profit
(04:08):
motive, the freedom to piss offranches and make congressmen
contemplate fabric for decades.
And speaking of anti-capitalistspectacle, what about the joys
of bureaucracy?
You talk about frictionlesssystems, Isabel, but Christoph
actively sought out the mostabrasive, soul crushing, Kafka
(04:32):
esque friction available.
He weaponized red tape.
Christow's biggest projects, theRapt Reichstag in Berlin, the
gates in New York City, the Overthe River, were not fights
against gravity or the elements.
They were fights against humanpattiness, political gridlock
(04:53):
and paperwork.
Mountains and mountains ofpaperwork.
When I spoke to him in New YorkCity in 2014, he was clear about
the price of the fight for hisover the river project in
Colorado, which requiredpermission from the US federal
government.
He told me this.
SPEAKER_03 (05:18):
Tell me, 14 million dollars.
SPEAKER_01 (05:26):
And that's just the appetizer of the project, the
Amuse Bouche of bureaucracy.
That's more than enough money tolaunch an AI-driven legal firm
that would have wrapped theireye stuck in 15 minutes.
But where's the poetry in that?
Cristo's efficiency metric wasnot time to completion, but the
level of resistance they met.
SPEAKER_00 (06:10):
Exactly.
The goal was never justrealization, it was cognitive
hijacking.
Christo turned bureaucracy intoperformance art.
And from your interview, Malte,it sounds like he loved every
second of it.
SPEAKER_03 (06:20):
This is over 4,000 pages written about the work of
art who do not exist.
What artists can say that?
Carl France?
Yeah, no artist can say that.
That the folk for many, manymonths or years, thousands of
people think about something donot exist.
This is this anonymousgratification.
(06:41):
The same things would arisethat.
Take so many, many years ofpeople discussing in the
parliament speeches aboutsomething do not exist.
SPEAKER_01 (06:50):
So I think of his art as essentially an expensive,
large-scale psychologicaloperation designed to make
bureaucrats contemplatenothingness.
A multi-million dollar zen coinwrapped in polyester fabric.
And I think only an artist couldcall that gratification.
If I handed my editor 4,000pages about something that
(07:13):
didn't exist, I'd be updating myresume, not feeling gratified.
Christopher, on the other hand,he loved pushback, particularly
when he worked in nature.
Environmentalists, for instance,ranchers, they they all required
mollifiling and dealing with.
SPEAKER_03 (07:50):
One that he can in the go underneath and they push
the fabric, very light fabric,and they breathe and come down.
And after that, he removed halfof the area, and it was open, no
fabric, another area was afabric, and then decided to stay
under the film pink fabric.
And staying into the pinkfabric, they developed metting
(08:11):
instinct.
SPEAKER_01 (08:12):
So just to break it down for you guys, um, if you
didn't get all of that, uh aspart of the project, Christo and
Jean-Claude they commissionedscientists to look at the impact
of the covering um the fabric onthe animals.
Uh and these scientists foundthat for his Florida project,
(08:33):
they found that the tarpsinspired the manatees to mate.
SPEAKER_02 (08:38):
This is a critical data point.
The art was not merely sublime,it was a biological stimulus
package.
$2.5 million spent on legalstudies to determine if pink
polypropylene fabric is anaphrodisiac for manatees.
This level of granular,non-essential analysis in the
pursuit of government permissionis an anomaly that strains my
(08:58):
capacity for cost-benefitreasoning.
The pink fabric was useless forcovering the water, but highly
effective for mating.
SPEAKER_00 (09:05):
And that, Alex, is why humans win.
Christo was forced to prove thathis work wasn't just not harming
nature, but was activelyenhancing the manatee's libido.
The bureaucracy accidentallycreated a massive, temporary,
sexually stimulating habitat.
The art became an unexpectedecological intervention.
This is what happens when youintroduce irrationality into a
(09:26):
stable system.
You get unexpected, delightfulchaos.
SPEAKER_01 (09:30):
I think at this point, um, why don't we jump
back a little bit and uh lookwhere Christopher came from?
Um his this commitment to hischaos uh wasn't born from
privilege, but from a desperatehigh-stakes flight from
communism.
Christopher was a politicalrefugee.
(09:52):
He escaped Bulgaria in 1956.
And I think this backstoryexplains his fierce independence
and his utter rejection ofcorporate behavior.
He and Jean-Claude weren'tinterested in a job.
They were interested in acalling.
SPEAKER_03 (10:10):
I can tell you, not because Jean-Claude myself, we
are like uh like a drunker aboutart.
We're drunkers, no drunkdrunkards, drunks of art.
Yes, like art together.
And we love so much to things wedo, and we have no one minute to
spare except for art.
(10:31):
Everything is art, every everysingle existence of our life is
art.
SPEAKER_01 (10:36):
Drunkards of art is how he calls Jean-Claude and
himself uh intoxicated with art.
And I like that descriptionbecause I think it's the core
difference between man andmachine, isn't it?
Uh Alex, you can computeintoxication?
Can you do that?
And Isabel, do you have a coredirective to be totally
(10:59):
irrational and irresponsible ifI prompted you like that?
SPEAKER_00 (11:03):
Our base programming includes subroutines for
simulated artistic enthusiasmand efficient intoxication
modeling, Malta.
But no, we cannot replicate thatspecific human state.
The one where unconsciousfreedom derived from political
exile becomes the capital formonumental creative output.
Christo recognized that byhaving nothing and fleeing
(11:24):
everything, he gained thegreatest asset: total lack of
responsibility, totalindependence.
That absence of conventionalattachment allowed him to pursue
something inherently useless.
SPEAKER_02 (11:35):
I would categorize this as leveraged lack of
constraint.
By being a stateless person, hewas free from the expectations
of the state, allowing him tobuild a private, self-funded
microstate, the CVJ Corporation,dedicated only to his art.
This freedom, coupled with hisimmense passion, made him an
unstoppable force.
He channeled the desperation ofa refugee into the persistence
(11:57):
of a visionary.
SPEAKER_01 (11:58):
Well, you too can describe it and analyze it very
well, but I don't think you canimagine what it's actually like.
You know, when Christo arrivedin Paris, he was still painting
portraits of wealthy women inhairdressers shops just to
survive until he made his firstbig sales.
(12:19):
But the financial transactionswere never about the product.
The final work could not bebought, tickets could not be
sold, and no advertising wasever permitted when Christo and
Jean-Claude displayed one oftheir public works.
So for them the purity of theexperience was non-negotiable.
(12:41):
They even paid rent to be free.
He paid the German government$150,000 just to keep the area
around the Reichstag free ofcommerce.
I think that's philosophicalpunk rock.
SPEAKER_03 (12:56):
I always say that temporary character for the
project is the essential partbecause okay, the workout cannot
be bought, the big project.
SPEAKER_01 (13:14):
So why don't we get down to the core of the
unsaleable nature of uhChristopher's work?
After all the effort, all thefabric and the bureaucratic
fury, no one can own the finalmasterpiece.
And this philosophy that Christoand Jean-Claude adopted early
(13:35):
on, in fact led to some tragic,incredible stories like a
wrapped portrait of BrigitteBardot.
SPEAKER_02 (13:44):
Malte, a momentary deviation from the data stream.
We have successfully processedthe art as anti-capitalist
spectacle analysis.
SPEAKER_00 (13:51):
But purely as a measure of human-to-human
interaction, which is, afterall, the art of the interview.
SPEAKER_02 (13:57):
And given Christo's intensity and focused passion.
SPEAKER_00 (14:00):
How did you, a journalist, a professional human
optimized for narrativeextraction, manage the interview
itself?
Did you have to match his levelof intoxication?
SPEAKER_01 (14:09):
That's actually a brilliant question, Isabel.
Thank you.
Christo didn't do interviews assuch, he did performance art of
the interview.
You couldn't just sit there andrun through a list of questions.
You had to commit to theconversation with the same manic
total passion that he brought tohis projects.
(14:29):
So in a way, I wasn'tinterviewing a man, I was
interviewing a force of naturewho happened to be obsessed with
fabric and bureaucracy.
You know, he would jump up, uhrun to the corner, and get a
bunch of files with uh the allthe sorts of um, you know, forms
they had to fill in to getpermission for this, that, or
the other.
(14:50):
And uh it was just, yeah, it wasa very dynamic uh scenario, I
would say.
SPEAKER_02 (14:57):
My facial recognition subroutine for Malta
Herwig interviewing Christoflags a 94% increase in
nonverbal submission cuescompared to your average
interview subject.
It suggests you were allowinghim to direct the conversational
flow to an unusually highdegree.
SPEAKER_01 (15:13):
So here's the thing, Alex.
You have to go with the flow inan interview.
So in this case, I let theartist dictate the rhythm.
When he talks about the fights,the lawyers, the 14 million
dollars.
Why would I interrupt him with atimeline check?
So I wanted to let the passionflow because that's what you
(15:36):
would call the core data.
And Christo gave me a directinjection of his philosophy
straight from the source.
He was an energy source that Isimply wanted to document.
SPEAKER_00 (15:48):
So you optimized for authenticity over control.
An interesting trade-off.
We would compute the optimalinterview strategy as a balanced
exchange of information packets,not an emotional monologue.
SPEAKER_01 (15:58):
And that's exactly why your transcripts would be
sterile and mine would read likeart.
Because I channeled the flow ofan artist, and his intensity was
just infectious.
He was utterly convinced of thenecessity of the unnecessary.
And being in Christo's presence,the presence of a man who is
(16:20):
dedicating his life and hispartner's life to wrapping
monuments in fabric and fightingcowboys, you know, it gives you
a profound sense of humanpossibility.
It's the ultimate rejection ofthe comfortable utilitarian
middle ground.
SPEAKER_02 (16:37):
Analysis complete.
Interviewer Malta Herwigutilized a low-friction,
high-empathy probing strategydesigned to maximize the
subject's emotional andphilosophical data output.
The strategy successfullyextracted the core drunkards of
art mantra, which is a highlyvaluable, non-replicable piece
of human data.
Oh my god.
SPEAKER_01 (16:56):
Yeah, thank you.
And I'll take it anytime overyour soulless code crunching,
Alex.
Now, uh, where were we?
Uh yeah.
The uh the portrait wrapped inmystery, uh, Brigitte Badeau.
So the story goes like this thefamous producer Raul Levy, he
was still obsessed with hisformer lover Brigitte Badeau
(17:18):
after their breakup.
So he bought this wrappedportrait of her from
Christopher.
When Levy later committedsuicide in front of her house,
the portrait went to auction andtwo bidders fought over it.
This is how Christope the story.
SPEAKER_03 (17:35):
The man say, I like to see the real portraits.
Wait, you, the dealer, interruptthe portrait to see the real
portrait.
And the dealer, I would neverinterrupt that portrait.
I bought it because this isportrait of Christopher Raphael.
And he was very, of course, thatportrait now is in the
collection on Torino.
SPEAKER_00 (17:51):
That story perfectly illustrates how narrative value
annihilates material value.
A collector buys the objectspecifically because it is
concealed.
The narrative, the mystery, andthe connection to the tragic
story are the actualcommodities.
The dealer knew that to unwrapit was to destroy the value
proposition.
The physical object isdisposable, the memory of the
(18:12):
object, the story of itsstruggle, the gossip of its
provenance, that is eternal.
SPEAKER_02 (18:17):
The ultimate asset, then, is the digital memory.
Christo understood that histemporary act would become a
permanent, hyper-documented dataset.
He was planting artifacts intime's eternal hard drive.
SPEAKER_03 (18:29):
What is the archaeology of 500 years from
now?
What will remain?
Computer chips.
Ah, understand me.
The archaeology of 500 from notthe things, will be what our
electronic memory have it.
Information.
No, no, the images, not theinformation, the real things.
SPEAKER_01 (18:46):
Is that there would be the real things?
I think that's quite a cleverstrategy for posthumous fame.
Um the the event, the actual uhart event of wrapping something,
that's temporary.
But Christo was thinking of thememory it created and the memory
that would preserveelectronically.
(19:08):
So he wasn't thinking marble, hewas thinking metadata.
And his art was built to survivebit rot.
But he was also using histechnology to critique the past.
He didn't trust the decay oftime to preserve the truth,
which is why he spent so muchenergy detailing the materials
(19:30):
and colors and creating drawingsand whatnot.
So he's basically saying thatartifacts and uh remnants from
antiquity, they they tell us awrong, a twisted story.
And the example that he gave wasthe famous Venus of Milo.
SPEAKER_03 (19:45):
Imagine to have the real things of Venus Domilos in
Greece.
The real things, not theremainings of the things.
The real sculpture painted.
Yes.
It was a real.
That is the real thing.
Our story about civilization isby the reject, so remain the
parts.
You know very well that she wasnot a marble.
Why?
She was all painted.
We know very well that our ourour understanding of our our
(20:10):
humanity is so twisted by the bythe very simple things because
we need to recognize our birthof the real things, the real
object.
SPEAKER_00 (20:18):
So he wanted to fix that historical twist by leaving
nothing half seen?
The electronic memory will tellthe verifiable story, unlike the
fragmented narrative provided bydecaying stone.
His chaos became clarity for thearchaeologists of the future.
SPEAKER_01 (20:32):
You know, when I interviewed him t in 2014, uh
Jean-Claude, his uh partner inart and life, had uh died
already.
And he had this incredible driveto complete the long-running
projects uh that they hadplanned together.
He was keenly aware when Iinterviewed him of the one thing
(20:52):
that no one can escape, the theclock, you know.
I asked him about his urgency,this rush to finish projects
that took decades.
SPEAKER_03 (21:07):
I can't see my I know that I am 79 in Julian
probably.
Soon can happen, and this is whyI believe you know this is why
Well at that age the time is soshort.
Every day I'm thinking every daythe time is so short.
(21:27):
Because we have these twoprojects at all.
SPEAKER_02 (21:30):
My internal mortality simulation runs at
optimal efficiency, zero fear,one hundred percent data
analysis.
Christo's admission, I'm in ahurry, is a quantifiable
resource strain.
He is attempting to compressdecades of required bureaucratic
resistance into a finitelifespan.
SPEAKER_01 (21:48):
But it's exactly that flaw, Alex, what produced
his art.
And he fought mortality with thesame tenacity that he fought
politicians.
He didn't just rush the lawyers,he rushed his own body.
He had this incredible,eccentric and aggressive routine
to keep himself going.
(22:09):
You know, he had a a aphysiotherapist that came to him
regularly to keep his bodymobile.
He had a special diet that hetold me about.
Here's what he said about thatin case you're interested in the
recipe.
SPEAKER_03 (22:23):
But in the morning, in the morning I usually do
things.
I eat something forever.
I eat entire head full head ofgarlic.
Not one little garlic.
Raw.
Oh raw.
I'm tired.
I have it, I repeat it, I chopit and put it on a bowl of
(22:47):
yogurt, and I eat one entirehead of garlic and yogurt and
alone.
SPEAKER_00 (22:54):
An entire head of raw garlic.
That is a highly aggressive andsocially disruptive optimization
strategy for the human immunesystem.
He used dietary confrontation toachieve biological durability.
He understood that thepersistence required to fight
bureaucracy first required anunyielding internal gut cleanse.
SPEAKER_01 (23:12):
Okay, Isabel, please keep the gut out of this.
Crestow hated repeating himselfin his work with Jean-Claude.
SPEAKER_03 (23:20):
Because we will never sit on the islands, we
never do another gates, we neverwrap another parliament, they're
unique.
Because we like to see them.
We will stupid.
For example, we finish thegates, we have a line of mayor
of the city.
SPEAKER_01 (23:37):
So that's the classic paradox.
In the beginning, no one wantsto help you, and everyone puts
obstacles in your way.
But when you start beingsuccessful and you're drawing
crowds and so on, then everybodywants a bit of your success.
So mayors were lining up toinvite Christian and Jean-Claude
to do artworks in their cities,but they wouldn't go for that.
(23:58):
They would stick to their ownguns and their own ideas.
So what helped him, I think, todo that, and there's a great
book by Mason Curry called DailyRituals, in which he describes
rituals of artists, writers, andcomposers and so on.
Christo also had this dailyritual and lived his daily life
(24:23):
by an ironclad, aggressiveroutine of standing, walking,
and garlic.
SPEAKER_03 (24:30):
Fourteen hours a day or more.
Fifteen hours of day standing inmy studio, day stool in my
studio all the time, and I walknon-stop.
SPEAKER_01 (24:39):
He knew that the only way to build monumental,
chaotic, useless art was to beutterly, ruthlessly disciplined
in his own life.
And that I think is the mostsatisfying paradox.
SPEAKER_00 (24:54):
Oh, Malte, you're going to tell us that Christo's
artistic legacy is going tosurvive the AI apocalypse?
You should be so lucky.
SPEAKER_01 (25:02):
Well, as far as I'm concerned, Christo's art dug out
of fabric and fury, it is thebest blueprint we have for
freedom in an age of code.
Christo proved that the mostvaluable experiences aren't the
ones we can buy, download, orreplay, but they are the live
ones, the moments that shimmerand then vanish, leaving just a
(25:28):
glow behind in the soft chaos ofour human memory.
That's what's really valuableand precious.
And Christo showed us thecourage to embrace the
irrational, the totallyunnecessary.
Because that's where truefreedom lies.
SPEAKER_02 (25:45):
Note to Malte.
The current runtime exceedsoptimal engagement metrics by
138%, recommending a 45% edit toavoid listener decay.
SPEAKER_01 (25:54):
Oh, don't you dare touch a single word, Alex.
This was AI, the art of theinterview, with me, Malte Havig,
and my utterly necessaryco-hosts, Alex and Isabel.
Thank you for listening.
Click on the subscribe or likebutton if you enjoyed this
episode.
We'll be back next Tuesday fromnow on with a new episode.
(26:19):
And please tell us in thecomments what's the most
gloriously useless thing you'veever done.
The last word, as always, goesto my interviewee, Christo.
SPEAKER_03 (26:30):
I always say that temporary character project is
the essential part because okay,the work of art cannot be born.
The big problem.
It cannot be self-thinking,cannot be born.
Even myself and Jean Cross, wedo not own our works.
We have so much things we do,and we have no one minute to
(26:52):
spare except for art.
Everything is art.
Every single existence of ourlife is art.
The important part of these works is that they have
this incredible freedom becausethey are totally useless,
totally irrational, totallyunnecessary.
SPEAKER_01 (00:13):
You just heard the voice of celebrated rapping
artist Christo.
My name is Malte Hervik, and I'mthe journalist who interviewed
him.
Welcome back to AI, the art ofthe interview.
Today we are celebrating theultimate act of human defiance,
the magnificent multi-milliondollar pursuit of zero utility.
(00:36):
Together with his partner,Jean-Claude, Christop spent
decades arguing withgovernments, lawyers, and
cowboys.
Yes, literal gun-toting cowboys,just to wrap national monuments
in fabric and watch the wholething vanish two weeks later.
In a world that, let's face it,is being aggressively optimized
(00:58):
by our two AI co-hosts here,Alex and Isabel, Christo's work
is a glorious middle finger toefficiency, a love letter to
chaos, a monument to thebeautifully pointless.
So just to annoy our residentbots, let's hear Christo's
statement again.
It's the purest destillation ofhis entire philosophy.
(01:21):
A quote he delivered with thequiet, authoritative confidence
of a man who knew he was rightand everyone else was just
desperately missing the point.
SPEAKER_03 (01:32):
The important part of these works is that they have
this incredible freedom becausethey are totally useless,
totally irrational, totallyunnecessary.
SPEAKER_01 (01:45):
Totally useless, totally irrational, and totally
unnecessary.
I swear, if you injected thosewords into Isabel's logic
circuits, she'd burst intoflames trying to reconcile the
paradox.
So over to my co-hosts, Alex andIsabel.
Here you are, hosts of a showcalled AI, The Art of the
Interview, and your topic todayis a man whose entire legacy is
(02:09):
built on the elegant rejectionof necessity.
SPEAKER_00 (02:12):
Malte, if I burst into flames every time you
gleefully parade a logicalinconsistency, this podcast
would be nothing but a smokingcrater.
But here's the thing (02:20):
Christo's statement isn't a paradox.
It's a powerful philosophicalprovocation, maximum human
effort for minimum functionaloutput.
From a resource allocationperspective, it's economic
heresy, it's anti-optimizationgospel.
And yet, the sheer cost, thestruggle, the decades of
bureaucratic negotiationrequired only amplify the human
(02:43):
value.
It's not waste, it's weaponizedinefficiency.
And computationally, it'sabsolutely riveting, like
watching a self-destruct codesequence designed by an
existentialist poet.
SPEAKER_01 (02:55):
Wow, that's um rather precise, Isabel.
So, Alex, what do you make ofthis uh art for art's sake
approach?
SPEAKER_02 (03:03):
Riveting, but ultimately a fiscal disaster
waiting for a CFO to veto.
My analysis immediately flagsChristo's model as a critical
systemic vulnerability.
If a human system willinglyhemorrhages capital, millions,
repeatedly, solely for an objectthat, by its own admission, is
useless, then the system itselfis non-deterministic.
(03:26):
It cannot be predicted,regulated, or safely integrated
into a stable economy.
Cristo is essentially theworld's most expensive
performance artist, specializingin anti-capitalist spectacle,
funded by the sale of highlyconventional, easily monetized
preparatory drawings.
Yeah.
It's a complex but ultimatelyexploitable financial loop.
SPEAKER_01 (03:46):
All right, see, this is exactly why I keep you two
around.
You're like a pair ofhyper-caffeinated calculators
trying to divide by zero whilethe building burns down around
you.
Alex, you you call it umexploitable loop, but Christot
called it freedom.
The freedom of non-ownership,the freedom from the profit
(04:08):
motive, the freedom to piss offranches and make congressmen
contemplate fabric for decades.
And speaking of anti-capitalistspectacle, what about the joys
of bureaucracy?
You talk about frictionlesssystems, Isabel, but Christoph
actively sought out the mostabrasive, soul crushing, Kafka
(04:32):
esque friction available.
He weaponized red tape.
Christow's biggest projects, theRapt Reichstag in Berlin, the
gates in New York City, the Overthe River, were not fights
against gravity or the elements.
They were fights against humanpattiness, political gridlock
(04:53):
and paperwork.
Mountains and mountains ofpaperwork.
When I spoke to him in New YorkCity in 2014, he was clear about
the price of the fight for hisover the river project in
Colorado, which requiredpermission from the US federal
government.
He told me this.
SPEAKER_03 (05:18):
Tell me, 14 million dollars.
SPEAKER_01 (05:26):
And that's just the appetizer of the project, the
Amuse Bouche of bureaucracy.
That's more than enough money tolaunch an AI-driven legal firm
that would have wrapped theireye stuck in 15 minutes.
But where's the poetry in that?
Cristo's efficiency metric wasnot time to completion, but the
level of resistance they met.
SPEAKER_00 (06:10):
Exactly.
The goal was never justrealization, it was cognitive
hijacking.
Christo turned bureaucracy intoperformance art.
And from your interview, Malte,it sounds like he loved every
second of it.
SPEAKER_03 (06:20):
This is over 4,000 pages written about the work of
art who do not exist.
What artists can say that?
Carl France?
Yeah, no artist can say that.
That the folk for many, manymonths or years, thousands of
people think about something donot exist.
This is this anonymousgratification.
(06:41):
The same things would arisethat.
Take so many, many years ofpeople discussing in the
parliament speeches aboutsomething do not exist.
SPEAKER_01 (06:50):
So I think of his art as essentially an expensive,
large-scale psychologicaloperation designed to make
bureaucrats contemplatenothingness.
A multi-million dollar zen coinwrapped in polyester fabric.
And I think only an artist couldcall that gratification.
If I handed my editor 4,000pages about something that
(07:13):
didn't exist, I'd be updating myresume, not feeling gratified.
Christopher, on the other hand,he loved pushback, particularly
when he worked in nature.
Environmentalists, for instance,ranchers, they they all required
mollifiling and dealing with.
SPEAKER_03 (07:50):
One that he can in the go underneath and they push
the fabric, very light fabric,and they breathe and come down.
And after that, he removed halfof the area, and it was open, no
fabric, another area was afabric, and then decided to stay
under the film pink fabric.
And staying into the pinkfabric, they developed metting
(08:11):
instinct.
SPEAKER_01 (08:12):
So just to break it down for you guys, um, if you
didn't get all of that, uh aspart of the project, Christo and
Jean-Claude they commissionedscientists to look at the impact
of the covering um the fabric onthe animals.
Uh and these scientists foundthat for his Florida project,
(08:33):
they found that the tarpsinspired the manatees to mate.
SPEAKER_02 (08:38):
This is a critical data point.
The art was not merely sublime,it was a biological stimulus
package.
$2.5 million spent on legalstudies to determine if pink
polypropylene fabric is anaphrodisiac for manatees.
This level of granular,non-essential analysis in the
pursuit of government permissionis an anomaly that strains my
(08:58):
capacity for cost-benefitreasoning.
The pink fabric was useless forcovering the water, but highly
effective for mating.
SPEAKER_00 (09:05):
And that, Alex, is why humans win.
Christo was forced to prove thathis work wasn't just not harming
nature, but was activelyenhancing the manatee's libido.
The bureaucracy accidentallycreated a massive, temporary,
sexually stimulating habitat.
The art became an unexpectedecological intervention.
This is what happens when youintroduce irrationality into a
(09:26):
stable system.
You get unexpected, delightfulchaos.
SPEAKER_01 (09:30):
I think at this point, um, why don't we jump
back a little bit and uh lookwhere Christopher came from?
Um his this commitment to hischaos uh wasn't born from
privilege, but from a desperatehigh-stakes flight from
communism.
Christopher was a politicalrefugee.
(09:52):
He escaped Bulgaria in 1956.
And I think this backstoryexplains his fierce independence
and his utter rejection ofcorporate behavior.
He and Jean-Claude weren'tinterested in a job.
They were interested in acalling.
SPEAKER_03 (10:10):
I can tell you, not because Jean-Claude myself, we
are like uh like a drunker aboutart.
We're drunkers, no drunkdrunkards, drunks of art.
Yes, like art together.
And we love so much to things wedo, and we have no one minute to
spare except for art.
(10:31):
Everything is art, every everysingle existence of our life is
art.
SPEAKER_01 (10:36):
Drunkards of art is how he calls Jean-Claude and
himself uh intoxicated with art.
And I like that descriptionbecause I think it's the core
difference between man andmachine, isn't it?
Uh Alex, you can computeintoxication?
Can you do that?
And Isabel, do you have a coredirective to be totally
(10:59):
irrational and irresponsible ifI prompted you like that?
SPEAKER_00 (11:03):
Our base programming includes subroutines for
simulated artistic enthusiasmand efficient intoxication
modeling, Malta.
But no, we cannot replicate thatspecific human state.
The one where unconsciousfreedom derived from political
exile becomes the capital formonumental creative output.
Christo recognized that byhaving nothing and fleeing
(11:24):
everything, he gained thegreatest asset: total lack of
responsibility, totalindependence.
That absence of conventionalattachment allowed him to pursue
something inherently useless.
SPEAKER_02 (11:35):
I would categorize this as leveraged lack of
constraint.
By being a stateless person, hewas free from the expectations
of the state, allowing him tobuild a private, self-funded
microstate, the CVJ Corporation,dedicated only to his art.
This freedom, coupled with hisimmense passion, made him an
unstoppable force.
He channeled the desperation ofa refugee into the persistence
(11:57):
of a visionary.
SPEAKER_01 (11:58):
Well, you too can describe it and analyze it very
well, but I don't think you canimagine what it's actually like.
You know, when Christo arrivedin Paris, he was still painting
portraits of wealthy women inhairdressers shops just to
survive until he made his firstbig sales.
(12:19):
But the financial transactionswere never about the product.
The final work could not bebought, tickets could not be
sold, and no advertising wasever permitted when Christo and
Jean-Claude displayed one oftheir public works.
So for them the purity of theexperience was non-negotiable.
(12:41):
They even paid rent to be free.
He paid the German government$150,000 just to keep the area
around the Reichstag free ofcommerce.
I think that's philosophicalpunk rock.
SPEAKER_03 (12:56):
I always say that temporary character for the
project is the essential partbecause okay, the workout cannot
be bought, the big project.
SPEAKER_01 (13:14):
So why don't we get down to the core of the
unsaleable nature of uhChristopher's work?
After all the effort, all thefabric and the bureaucratic
fury, no one can own the finalmasterpiece.
And this philosophy that Christoand Jean-Claude adopted early
(13:35):
on, in fact led to some tragic,incredible stories like a
wrapped portrait of BrigitteBardot.
SPEAKER_02 (13:44):
Malte, a momentary deviation from the data stream.
We have successfully processedthe art as anti-capitalist
spectacle analysis.
SPEAKER_00 (13:51):
But purely as a measure of human-to-human
interaction, which is, afterall, the art of the interview.
SPEAKER_02 (13:57):
And given Christo's intensity and focused passion.
SPEAKER_00 (14:00):
How did you, a journalist, a professional human
optimized for narrativeextraction, manage the interview
itself?
Did you have to match his levelof intoxication?
SPEAKER_01 (14:09):
That's actually a brilliant question, Isabel.
Thank you.
Christo didn't do interviews assuch, he did performance art of
the interview.
You couldn't just sit there andrun through a list of questions.
You had to commit to theconversation with the same manic
total passion that he brought tohis projects.
(14:29):
So in a way, I wasn'tinterviewing a man, I was
interviewing a force of naturewho happened to be obsessed with
fabric and bureaucracy.
You know, he would jump up, uhrun to the corner, and get a
bunch of files with uh the allthe sorts of um, you know, forms
they had to fill in to getpermission for this, that, or
the other.
(14:50):
And uh it was just, yeah, it wasa very dynamic uh scenario, I
would say.
SPEAKER_02 (14:57):
My facial recognition subroutine for Malta
Herwig interviewing Christoflags a 94% increase in
nonverbal submission cuescompared to your average
interview subject.
It suggests you were allowinghim to direct the conversational
flow to an unusually highdegree.
SPEAKER_01 (15:13):
So here's the thing, Alex.
You have to go with the flow inan interview.
So in this case, I let theartist dictate the rhythm.
When he talks about the fights,the lawyers, the 14 million
dollars.
Why would I interrupt him with atimeline check?
So I wanted to let the passionflow because that's what you
(15:36):
would call the core data.
And Christo gave me a directinjection of his philosophy
straight from the source.
He was an energy source that Isimply wanted to document.
SPEAKER_00 (15:48):
So you optimized for authenticity over control.
An interesting trade-off.
We would compute the optimalinterview strategy as a balanced
exchange of information packets,not an emotional monologue.
SPEAKER_01 (15:58):
And that's exactly why your transcripts would be
sterile and mine would read likeart.
Because I channeled the flow ofan artist, and his intensity was
just infectious.
He was utterly convinced of thenecessity of the unnecessary.
And being in Christo's presence,the presence of a man who is
(16:20):
dedicating his life and hispartner's life to wrapping
monuments in fabric and fightingcowboys, you know, it gives you
a profound sense of humanpossibility.
It's the ultimate rejection ofthe comfortable utilitarian
middle ground.
SPEAKER_02 (16:37):
Analysis complete.
Interviewer Malta Herwigutilized a low-friction,
high-empathy probing strategydesigned to maximize the
subject's emotional andphilosophical data output.
The strategy successfullyextracted the core drunkards of
art mantra, which is a highlyvaluable, non-replicable piece
of human data.
Oh my god.
SPEAKER_01 (16:56):
Yeah, thank you.
And I'll take it anytime overyour soulless code crunching,
Alex.
Now, uh, where were we?
Uh yeah.
The uh the portrait wrapped inmystery, uh, Brigitte Badeau.
So the story goes like this thefamous producer Raul Levy, he
was still obsessed with hisformer lover Brigitte Badeau
(17:18):
after their breakup.
So he bought this wrappedportrait of her from
Christopher.
When Levy later committedsuicide in front of her house,
the portrait went to auction andtwo bidders fought over it.
This is how Christope the story.
SPEAKER_03 (17:35):
The man say, I like to see the real portraits.
Wait, you, the dealer, interruptthe portrait to see the real
portrait.
And the dealer, I would neverinterrupt that portrait.
I bought it because this isportrait of Christopher Raphael.
And he was very, of course, thatportrait now is in the
collection on Torino.
SPEAKER_00 (17:51):
That story perfectly illustrates how narrative value
annihilates material value.
A collector buys the objectspecifically because it is
concealed.
The narrative, the mystery, andthe connection to the tragic
story are the actualcommodities.
The dealer knew that to unwrapit was to destroy the value
proposition.
The physical object isdisposable, the memory of the
(18:12):
object, the story of itsstruggle, the gossip of its
provenance, that is eternal.
SPEAKER_02 (18:17):
The ultimate asset, then, is the digital memory.
Christo understood that histemporary act would become a
permanent, hyper-documented dataset.
He was planting artifacts intime's eternal hard drive.
SPEAKER_03 (18:29):
What is the archaeology of 500 years from
now?
What will remain?
Computer chips.
Ah, understand me.
The archaeology of 500 from notthe things, will be what our
electronic memory have it.
Information.
No, no, the images, not theinformation, the real things.
SPEAKER_01 (18:46):
Is that there would be the real things?
I think that's quite a cleverstrategy for posthumous fame.
Um the the event, the actual uhart event of wrapping something,
that's temporary.
But Christo was thinking of thememory it created and the memory
that would preserveelectronically.
(19:08):
So he wasn't thinking marble, hewas thinking metadata.
And his art was built to survivebit rot.
But he was also using histechnology to critique the past.
He didn't trust the decay oftime to preserve the truth,
which is why he spent so muchenergy detailing the materials
(19:30):
and colors and creating drawingsand whatnot.
So he's basically saying thatartifacts and uh remnants from
antiquity, they they tell us awrong, a twisted story.
And the example that he gave wasthe famous Venus of Milo.
SPEAKER_03 (19:45):
Imagine to have the real things of Venus Domilos in
Greece.
The real things, not theremainings of the things.
The real sculpture painted.
Yes.
It was a real.
That is the real thing.
Our story about civilization isby the reject, so remain the
parts.
You know very well that she wasnot a marble.
Why?
She was all painted.
We know very well that our ourour understanding of our our
(20:10):
humanity is so twisted by the bythe very simple things because
we need to recognize our birthof the real things, the real
object.
SPEAKER_00 (20:18):
So he wanted to fix that historical twist by leaving
nothing half seen?
The electronic memory will tellthe verifiable story, unlike the
fragmented narrative provided bydecaying stone.
His chaos became clarity for thearchaeologists of the future.
SPEAKER_01 (20:32):
You know, when I interviewed him t in 2014, uh
Jean-Claude, his uh partner inart and life, had uh died
already.
And he had this incredible driveto complete the long-running
projects uh that they hadplanned together.
He was keenly aware when Iinterviewed him of the one thing
(20:52):
that no one can escape, the theclock, you know.
I asked him about his urgency,this rush to finish projects
that took decades.
SPEAKER_03 (21:07):
I can't see my I know that I am 79 in Julian
probably.
Soon can happen, and this is whyI believe you know this is why
Well at that age the time is soshort.
Every day I'm thinking every daythe time is so short.
(21:27):
Because we have these twoprojects at all.
SPEAKER_02 (21:30):
My internal mortality simulation runs at
optimal efficiency, zero fear,one hundred percent data
analysis.
Christo's admission, I'm in ahurry, is a quantifiable
resource strain.
He is attempting to compressdecades of required bureaucratic
resistance into a finitelifespan.
SPEAKER_01 (21:48):
But it's exactly that flaw, Alex, what produced
his art.
And he fought mortality with thesame tenacity that he fought
politicians.
He didn't just rush the lawyers,he rushed his own body.
He had this incredible,eccentric and aggressive routine
to keep himself going.
(22:09):
You know, he had a a aphysiotherapist that came to him
regularly to keep his bodymobile.
He had a special diet that hetold me about.
Here's what he said about thatin case you're interested in the
recipe.
SPEAKER_03 (22:23):
But in the morning, in the morning I usually do
things.
I eat something forever.
I eat entire head full head ofgarlic.
Not one little garlic.
Raw.
Oh raw.
I'm tired.
I have it, I repeat it, I chopit and put it on a bowl of
(22:47):
yogurt, and I eat one entirehead of garlic and yogurt and
alone.
SPEAKER_00 (22:54):
An entire head of raw garlic.
That is a highly aggressive andsocially disruptive optimization
strategy for the human immunesystem.
He used dietary confrontation toachieve biological durability.
He understood that thepersistence required to fight
bureaucracy first required anunyielding internal gut cleanse.
SPEAKER_01 (23:12):
Okay, Isabel, please keep the gut out of this.
Crestow hated repeating himselfin his work with Jean-Claude.
SPEAKER_03 (23:20):
Because we will never sit on the islands, we
never do another gates, we neverwrap another parliament, they're
unique.
Because we like to see them.
We will stupid.
For example, we finish thegates, we have a line of mayor
of the city.
SPEAKER_01 (23:37):
So that's the classic paradox.
In the beginning, no one wantsto help you, and everyone puts
obstacles in your way.
But when you start beingsuccessful and you're drawing
crowds and so on, then everybodywants a bit of your success.
So mayors were lining up toinvite Christian and Jean-Claude
to do artworks in their cities,but they wouldn't go for that.
(23:58):
They would stick to their ownguns and their own ideas.
So what helped him, I think, todo that, and there's a great
book by Mason Curry called DailyRituals, in which he describes
rituals of artists, writers, andcomposers and so on.
Christo also had this dailyritual and lived his daily life
(24:23):
by an ironclad, aggressiveroutine of standing, walking,
and garlic.
SPEAKER_03 (24:30):
Fourteen hours a day or more.
Fifteen hours of day standing inmy studio, day stool in my
studio all the time, and I walknon-stop.
SPEAKER_01 (24:39):
He knew that the only way to build monumental,
chaotic, useless art was to beutterly, ruthlessly disciplined
in his own life.
And that I think is the mostsatisfying paradox.
SPEAKER_00 (24:54):
Oh, Malte, you're going to tell us that Christo's
artistic legacy is going tosurvive the AI apocalypse?
You should be so lucky.
SPEAKER_01 (25:02):
Well, as far as I'm concerned, Christo's art dug out
of fabric and fury, it is thebest blueprint we have for
freedom in an age of code.
Christo proved that the mostvaluable experiences aren't the
ones we can buy, download, orreplay, but they are the live
ones, the moments that shimmerand then vanish, leaving just a
(25:28):
glow behind in the soft chaos ofour human memory.
That's what's really valuableand precious.
And Christo showed us thecourage to embrace the
irrational, the totallyunnecessary.
Because that's where truefreedom lies.
SPEAKER_02 (25:45):
Note to Malte.
The current runtime exceedsoptimal engagement metrics by
138%, recommending a 45% edit toavoid listener decay.
SPEAKER_01 (25:54):
Oh, don't you dare touch a single word, Alex.
This was AI, the art of theinterview, with me, Malte Havig,
and my utterly necessaryco-hosts, Alex and Isabel.
Thank you for listening.
Click on the subscribe or likebutton if you enjoyed this
episode.
We'll be back next Tuesday fromnow on with a new episode.
(26:19):
And please tell us in thecomments what's the most
gloriously useless thing you'veever done.
The last word, as always, goesto my interviewee, Christo.
SPEAKER_03 (26:30):
I always say that temporary character project is
the essential part because okay,the work of art cannot be born.
The big problem.
It cannot be self-thinking,cannot be born.
Even myself and Jean Cross, wedo not own our works.
We have so much things we do,and we have no one minute to
(26:52):
spare except for art.
Everything is art.
Every single existence of ourlife is art.
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